The Uninvited Pest

Barney Bear is trying to settle in for winter's hibernation, but a squirrel keeps waking him up in Rudolf Ising's last credited cartoon release for MGM.

Ising had been one of Walt Disney's original crew in Kansas City. He had gone with Disney to Hollywood, but left when Disney lost the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. With Hugh Harman and Friz Freleng, he devised a better way of animating characters talking, which led them to a contract with Leon Schlesinger to do Merrie Melodies. After Schlesinger had cut them out, their studio contracted with MGM for color cartoons, but eventually, Fred Quimby became their producer and their careers turned to industrial cartoons.

There were quite a few cartoons in this period about someone trying to sleep, only to be thwarted. This is an amusing one.

Barney Bear is eating his walnuts in bed in his cabin as he gets ready to hibernate. A squirrel spots the bowl of nuts through the window and promptly tries to get it. Barney Bear is a MGM character from the 40's and 50's who found a connection to Tom & Jerry. He is mostly lazy although in this one, he is getting ready for hibernation. The story is simple. It's a lot of slapstick. It's a seven minutes short. It's not anything special. It's perfectly fine.

While not one of my favourite cartoon characters, Barney Bear was a very funny and likable character where his sluggishness was a huge part of his charm. He was also interesting for being modelled on both his creator Rudolf Ising (who also was his first voice actor until 1941) and the mannerisms of Wallace Beery.

It is sad somewhat that 'The Uninvited Pest' was Ising's last Barney cartoon before various directors took over for the other 16 in the series. His ten contributions to the Barney Bear series were all among his better efforts, and 'The Uninvited Pest' is one of the series' best. As ever with the Barney cartoons, it's slight in the story. With that being said, it's also very well animated and is one of the series' funniest in a way where any reservations of a lack of originality was forgotten.

As to be expected, Barney's personality again is very well established and he proves again why he was deserving of his own series and it was sad he didn't last longer. He is a fun and adorable character and easy to root for, one can really understand his frustration. The animation is colourful and beautifully drawn with fluid movements and meticulous attention to detail. The amount of detail given to Barney's character design was incredibly nuanced and it was a shame that it became simplified later on and lost its special uniqueness.

Music, courtesy of Scott Bradley, is lushly and cleverly orchestrated, with lively and energetic rhythms and fits very well indeed, even enhancing the impact of actions and gestures.

The gags are never less than very funny, there is a lot of cute and silly charm and the squirrel is suitably pesty but is also as fun and sweet as Barney.

On the whole, one of the series' best. 9/10 Bethany Cox